Free-for-All

Drew Pearson's fight with Wisconsin's Senator Joe McCarthy started out as a private brawl. But last week, after Adam Hats had announced that it was not renewing its contract as Pearson's radio sponsor, newsmen from all over the nation jumped in. The big gun on McCarthy's side was Westbrook Pegler, who has long been in & out of libel suits with Pearson himself. Said Pegler of his longtime foe: "That lying blackguard is my man, just as Harold Ickes was in his time. Santa Claus brought him to me. Pearson is a liar and a rogue and I will belt him through the skylight as a service to my country and my honorable profession of journalism."

Almost everyone else lined up on Pearson's side. Calling McCarthy's charge that Pearson is a Communist tool an "outrageous big lie," the Washington Post summed up the general feeling of newsmen: "Senator McCarthy is able, by virtue of his congressional immunity, to engage in unrestricted defamation of any radio commentator or newspaper columnist whose opinions displease him . . . The public must demand an end to the kind of thought control that Senator McCarthy is creating through blackmailing advertisers."

At week's end, Adam Hats flatly denied in a full page ad in the N.Y. Times that it had been pressured into dropping Pearson. Actually, it said, it had notified Pearson a full month before the McCarthy ruckus that his contract would not be renewed, because it was switching from radio advertising into newspapers and magazines. Said Adam Hats: "It is therefore obviously impossible that Senator McCarthy's attack upon Mr. Pearson and requested boycott of Adam Hats could have had any influence whatsoever upon our decision."

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